Notes to self (?exists) — 2

• When meditating, pay close attention to the nostrils
• The spatial aspect of the nostrils through which air comes and leaves the body. That changes with each breath so a good game plan would be to track the flow
• Then there are temporal variations. There are phases of breathing when the flow starts, hangs in mid phase, ends, before exhalation befins. Then the same phases during exhalations.
• After exhaling, pay attention to the body sensations in the order Allan Wallace discussed in his book. That division needs to be mentally set up ahead of time and followed through.
• The attention will need to shift between the body/mind and breathing phases back and forth. Soon the breathing slows down and more time is available for paying attention to the body. This is the thinking space. This is important because during excitement, as the breathing paces up, leaves little time to think and act. This is something to keep mind. At all times, the idea will be to control and find that space to pause and think and paying attention to the breathing is perhaps the best bet.
• Thoughts will come and go but the time to pay attention to them is in the space between exhalation and next intake. Here the interesting bit is the flow control of breath that has a natural mechanism to channel thoughts by pacing up or down and in the process regulating breath with thought and the bodily sensations

The challenge is to bring what seems natural in a sitting meditation cobtext, to bring in to everyday life (non-meditation states) to gain a complete mastery of life in moment to moment situations.

The life experiment continues …